January Training

Last month I made the decision to get a coach to help me with, at least, the off season this year. I opted to try a coach to help take some of the guess work out of training and to free up my time trying to figure out what I needed to do. I've read all the training books and have a good idea overall on what's needed but were I think I need some help is assigning day to day workouts. Mixing things up to keep it interesting while accomplishing my goals. Now that things are in place, I figured I'd give you some idea of how its going and what kinds of workouts I've been doing.

First, my goals for this off season are to set the foundation for another good racing season this summer. Specifically, I would like to build/improve my aerobic foundation and loose 5-10 pounds from last years race weight. I don't want to become a winter superstar doomed to flame out early in the season, so I plan to be conservative with my workout intensity while still achieving the physical adaptations I'll need later.

To start with, it's January and long miles in the cold or on the stationary trainer can be mentally painful. I try to avoid anything on the trainer over about an hour and a half. If it's longer I try and ride outside. The trainer is an excellent way to control excursion and it makes it easy to correctly dial-in rides at a prescribed level. The majority of my time has been spent at an endurance level, meaning hard enough that it's a workout but easy enough to sustain it for longer periods and repeatable everyday. These aren't sitting in front of the TV and spinning away workouts, they are slightly uncomfortable working up a sweet with the fans on kind of ride. On average I've been working out about 8 hours a week, with the longer rides being on the weekend. Scheduling for me has had me riding early in the morning before work. Since it is January, this allows for a repeatable week-to-week schedule to be established.



So far I think things have been working well. I haven't had a lot of trouble completing the workouts. Having someone look at the data is modivation to not cut corners and complete everything as planned. Due to the nice weather we had a few weekends, I've actually been able to complete a few longer workouts than planned. With a few suggestions I've really been able to improve my workout warmups. Looking back over my training the past year, this January has been one of my highest output months in miles, time, TSS, and KJs. I feel fine, I'm not too tired and I still have a lot of motivation. More importantly, I talked to the wife last night and told her the numbers and asked "have I been riding too much? do you think it's had a negative family impact?" She said no and wouldn't have guessed I'd been riding any more than normal. I'm calling things a success so far!

Stay tuned!